The Four Boys I Thought I Loved and The One I Did
by MrsCharmander
Summary: Rose Weasley knows what love is; until she realises she has no idea.


**well I was cleaning out my old laptop and found this little thing, and thought I'd give it a cheeky post. hope you kids have fun xox**

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 **The Four Boys I Thought I Loved and The One I Did**

 **i.**

When I was eight years old, I announced that Teddy Remus Lupin and I were destined to be married. All the cousins loved Ted –and I was no different- whether it was because of his cool hair, his funny jokes, his record as the tree-climbing champion of the Potter-Weasley clan or just because he was older. But Teddy came to my house every Wednesday and Friday after school, and because he chased me around the garden and once tripped me over in the sand pit, that clearly meant he had a crush on me. Parading proudly around the dinner table wearing a dishcloth as a veil, there wasn't a doubt in my mind that I was in love with Teddy, and that he would, of course love me back. I hadn't planned the part where he would cover his face and cry before running back to Uncle Harry, where he nuzzled into his shoulder. That relationship lasted an epic 24 seconds, before mum sat me down and sad that Teddy just wasn't ready for commitment, and that I could do better than him. Though the heartbreak was _extreme,_ I managed to call him a butthead and move on. Very mature of me, I think.

 **ii.**

It was after Charms on a Thursday when Sammy Green asked me out. He was the cutest boy in Second Year, and he was a reserve Beater for the Ravenclaw Quidditch Team. His freckled were hidden by blush, much like mine. I felt my face flush as I looked up at him (because yes, try as I might, I still hadn't hit my growth spurt) and quietly agree. We were too young to go to Hogsmeade, those trips were restricted to Third Years and above, so we hung out at the Gobstones Meeting on Friday with my friend Hannah. I was recovering from a particularly brutal loss against the Head of Gobstones Club, Bertie Something-or-another, when Hannah did the unthinkable; she double dared me to kiss my boyfriend of one day. How dare she? Was romance dead? Did people have no notion of privacy or making things special? I wasn't ready for my first kiss! I wasn't even allowed to date boys yet! Mum would kill me if she found out. I'm still a child, a lowly twelve-year old. I'll have to have serious words with Hannah about this after. You can bet that she'll need to find someone else to edit her Potions essay.

Sammy had other ideas.

"Well if it's a double dare, I guess we have no choice," he mumbled nervously, looking up at me. The meeting had finished, so there were only a few people lingering in the room, but still, it was the principal of it.

But alas, before I knew it, there was a pair of lips on mine as Sammy wrapped his arms around my waist. It was rather disappointing, if I'm being honest. No fireworks, no butterflies, no feeling of being a grown-up, like I'd read about in my romance novels. There was just the vague sensation of having a fish flopping on my mouth, which I wasn't that keen on.

I decided to break up with Sammy on Monday, when we had Potions. We were moving too fast anyway.

 **iii.**

The summer before my Fifth Year at Hogwarts was when I was finally allowed to go to the muggle village by my house alone for the first time. I put on my nicest cardigan and laced up my boots and hiked up the hill and rolled down the other side. My goal was the old second-hand bookshop that my mum had taken me to before. I sat on the bench outside, with a bag filled to the brim in pre-loved stories, and my mind was already opening a door to another world. I don't recall whether it was a romance or a mystery or a children's books, but at the time I was so certain that it was my new favourite. When Ashton Peters, a brunette, gangly, grinning muggle sat next to me and asked what I was reading, I was even more sure I'd found a new favourite. He asked me to the movies, and I had to pretend like I knew what that meant before suggesting perhaps a picnic instead? He wrapped me in a tartan blanket and held my hand when the stars came out and was half way through walking me home before I realised that the sight of my younger brother's toes skimming the grass as he practiced Quidditch in our orchard might shock him a little. We met up every day for months and he kissed me in his bedroom while he was showing me his absurd muggle magic, complete with a disappearing card and all. It was nothing like Sammy Green in Second Year, and this time I wrapped my arms around his neck and I felt warm and I smiled into his mouth.

He was the first boy I dated properly, and he made my tummy feel fizzy. But eventually he started yelling because why couldn't he meet my family, was I embarrassed? Why wouldn't I tell him where I went to school? Why did I avoid talking about what sport I played and was I not serious about him? I always came up with something to tell him, which was harder than Transfiguration, I'll tell you that. We always ended up hugging and then going for a walk while our fingers tangled in the pocket of my red coat. But when school came and I refused to give him my phone number, and failing that, even an address to send letters, he decided that maybe I wasn't good for him.

His eyes were hard when he let my hand drop to my side and my fingers curl up to touch where he'd left them. His messy hair was falling in his eyes and I had to dig my nails into my palm to resist brushing them to the side and pressing my body to his. He mumbled something about how I couldn't give him enough, and I felt empty because I thought he'd taken everything already. He walked away, leaving me sitting alone on the bench that we first met, with the sun blinding me and making me feel all too warm for the sadness I felt, and I picked at the loose thread on my crimson coat as I tried to process what had just happened.

The first boy I dated properly had left me, and I wasn't too sure, but I thought I had loved him. Just a little.

 **iv.**

I kissed him in the Gryffindor Common Room while everyone else was at dinner. We sat on the lumpy sofa in front of the fire and his hand was snug on my waist and he made me forget about the days I spent crying over Ashton. We had met because his friends were my friends and told them he thought I was pretty. Frank Longbottom was the epitome of the perfect boyfriend. He complimented me when I absentmindedly mentioned how I didn't like the way my hair frizzed, and he held my hand when we walked down the halls and he sat with me at lunches and he brought me to family dinners. And at times I found myself falling for him. Like when we kissed and my hands brushed his jaw, I felt butterflies, or when we hugged and I breathed him in. When I was sitting in his dorm and talking to the other Gryffindor boys, and they made fun of him for keeping the receipt for the café we went to on our first date, and his tanned cheeks were tinged with red. When his parents were out and I was on top of him in his bed, he said that I didn't need to do anything I wasn't comfortable with, because he was happy to just be with me, and I could feel my face smiling and I could hear my brain thinking about how I was lucky to have found someone so inexplicably _nice_.

And I felt nice when I was with him. I felt like I was safe and I would always have someone to mail when I was bored and I would always have someone to hug when I needed it.

But somewhere in between Sixth and Seventh year, I started to wonder, _is nice all there is?_ Because I had read all the romance novels and I had heard my friends talk about how they were dizzy after kissing their boyfriends, and I recalled the times when I had broken off snogging sessions because I needed to finish an essay, or the times when Frank would join me and my friends by the lake and I wished he would leave me alone for just a few seconds of the day. But obviously, relationships take time. I would feel more later on. After time, I'd come to overlook how he makes the same jokes over and over and about how sometimes his breath smells and how he cheated on his last girlfriend and told me that 'it didn't count because they 'weren't really dating'.

I think I did grow to love him, because you can't spend every day for a year and a half with someone and not start to love them a little. But when I found him in a broom closet with his hand up Rebecca Silva's shirt because _you can't expect me to wait forever_ and I was able to slap him and walk away without feeling like my entire heart was going to shatter, I realised that I hadn't imagined our future together.

I still cried, believe me. I cried because I thought I could rely on him and I thought that maybe he loved me, because he told me he had so many times. I cried because he was one of my closest friends and where the _fuck_ did that hat get off saying that Gryffindors were chivalrous. I cried because I would have to learn to forget the smell of his cologne and pretend like I wasn't friends with his sister. I cried because Rose Weasley had been made a fool of, and even though I don't know if I really did want to be with him, I cried because I didn't get to make the decision.

I think that was the closest my heart had been to breaking.

 **v.**

Scorpius Malfoy was the extremely typical, nearly cliché bad-boy. He had hair down to his shoulders and wore flannel shirts over ripped jeans and rode a motorcycle. _A motorcycle_ for Merlin's sake. But I also knew that Scorpius Malfoy sobbed when he read Charlotte's Web and he only got the bike to piss off his dad and he takes me for rides in the rain because that's when it feels like the world is throwing everything at you and for once you're strong enough to take it when you're barrelling down the highway at sixty miles an hour. I know that when his parent's split up, he took his sister out for ice cream even though he felt like running away and pretending his family didn't exist. I know that he skips breakfast every morning to get extra sleep in before class, and his pockets are always full of food to pull out when he deems it necessary. I know that he's terrified of hurting me because he has a tendency to fuck things up but that's okay because when he kisses me and presses me against the wall or gives me a piggyback up the steep hill to his house or tells me that I'm the first person in his life that makes him want to be better, I feel explosions. I feel something that makes me want to write novels about us and carve our names into a million trees and set forests afire just to watch them burn while knowing the flames I was watching were nothing compared to what we had.

I feel so inexplicably alive that I couldn't imagine how I'd thought that Ashton Peters was _love._


End file.
